One company's response to the jury verdict in Apple vs. Samsung was still missing: Google's. The company has now responded to The Verge, and there's almost a certain bitterness in their language. Not, as you would expect, directed at Apple; no, the bitterness is directed at Samsung. The message Google is sending to other Android OEMs? Stick to stock Android, and you'll have no problems.

Getting the Android OEM community to use a generic version of Android may be quite difficult. They are obviously looking for ways to differentiate their products and the limitations of the smart phone form factor and build components do not make easy to make something distinctive.

That's why customisation of Android is so popular, both the OEMs and the carriers love to load up their handsets with apps and customisations, the problems is that neither the OEMs or the carriers have shown much ability in terms of software development so their efforts tend to be poor and tend to degrade user experience and satisfaction. Their lack of software development ability will be made worse now that they will be all trying not to appear to copy Apple and will thus be more inclined to try ill considered experiments.

The problem for the Android OEM community as a whole is that it is financially so precarious and the only OEM that has made a business success of Android has now been found guilty of copying Apple, a strategy which appears to have paid of as it has allowed Samsung to create a high brand profile and to make high profits, now however they face the difficult task of retaining that brand profile whilst coming out with designs that cannot be confused with Apple's.

Watching evolution of Galaxy devices one sees Samsung have been preparing for this for some time.
Their Touchwiz consequently change with each generation and (I believe) GS3 devices can't be reasonably accused of infringing Apple brand face (in terms of both device outline and software).
But that's not the biggest problem. That is Apple managed to validate the concept of owning absolutely fundamental multitouch interaction patterns (compare it to owning mouse click). That should never happen, but now that happened, producing modern CE devices for US market will be virtually impossible w/o Apple approval.

The Android infringement argument (I would say FUD campaign) is repeated adnaseum by countless tech bloggers but none of them has pointed to a single feature that is actually Android specific in all of this.

The fact that Apple and MS play in concert to destroy Android using litigation doesn't mean other os is inherently more safe from their questionable tactics.
In particular Apple and MS tactical alliance (edit) doesn't guarantee that in the future e.g. Apple programmers won't be sued by MS or WP oems by Apple.
Their cross licensing deals (who they actually cover?) have a limited time span.

The Android infringement argument (I would say FUD campaign) is repeated adnaseum by countless tech bloggers but none of them has pointed to a single feature that is actually Android specific in all of this.

The fact that Apple and MS play in concert to destroy Android using litigation doesn't mean other os is inherently more safe from their questionable tactics.
In particular Apple and MS tactical alliance (edit) doesn't guarantee that in the future e.g. Apple programmers won't be sued by MS or WP oems by Apple.
Their cross licensing deals (who they actually cover?) have a limited time span.

Um, MS obviously isn't trying to destroy Android. They simply wanted and got reasonable patent royalties for infringements. None of the companies involved has ever asserted that MS prevents them from conducting their businesses by banning devices, etc. Whereas, Apple most definitely wants to destroy Android and prevent them from being distributed.

The Android infringement argument (I would say FUD campaign) is repeated adnaseum by countless tech bloggers but none of them has pointed to a single feature that is actually Android specific in all of this.

The fact that Apple and MS play in concert to destroy Android using litigation doesn't mean other os is inherently more safe from their questionable tactics.
In particular Apple and MS tactical alliance (edit) doesn't guarantee that in the future e.g. Apple programmers won't be sued by MS or WP oems by Apple.
Their cross licensing deals (who they actually cover?) have a limited time span.

Um, MS obviously isn't trying to destroy Android. They simply wanted and got reasonable patent royalties for infringements. None of the companies involved has ever asserted that MS prevents them from conducting their businesses by banning devices, etc. Whereas, Apple most definitely wants to destroy Android and prevent them from being distributed.

In your usual bubble, you focus on old ~western-visible brands (which mostly, like with PCs before, will falter to the benefit of newcomers; this time even more rapidly, it seems) ...but ZTE does quite fine, is possibly the 3rd largest mobile maker by now. Oh and ZTE, together with Huawei, use quite standard Android on their (popular via carriers) handsets.